I think that the 'default' build ought to include points in hallowed ground (taking one from reckoning and one from rule of law), because although this is poor for single target, it's strong for AOE, and a 'default' build ought to cover all situations a tank is likely to encounter. I definitely want hallowed ground for Rhyolith, for example.

Lathdari wrote:I think that the 'default' build ought to include points in hallowed ground (taking one from reckoning and one from rule of law), because although this is poor for single target, it's strong for AOE, and a 'default' build ought to cover all situations a tank is likely to encounter. I definitely want hallowed ground for Rhyolith, for example.

Check the sections marked "Discretionary Points" and "The Leftovers."

Also:

Note that Crusade and Rule of Law are also both potent threat talents, especially in AoE

So why would you remove the point from Rule of Law since that helps beef up HotR...your primary AoE tanking ability...?

In tier 3, we have Hallowed Ground, which is a weak single-target DPS increase but a fairly noticeable benefit when AoE tanking due to the mana reduction. However, neither of these are recommended, because in Tier 4 we add Reckoning to the mix. Reckoning is the largest single-target DPS increase available to you at this point.

Why do we prefer a large single-target DPS increase to a fairly noticeable benefit when AoE tanking? (There seems to be an uncharacteristic lack of precision from Theck here, incidentally.) Single-target threat is never an issue, and even though the DPS benefit of Reckoning is large compared to other talents, it's negligible for my raid.

The point of Hallowed Ground is the mana saving, rather than the dps boost (although I'm not sure that a 40% dps boost to Consecration doesn't beat a 10% dps boost to HotR in any case*). The great thing about Consecration for Rhyolith (and similar things apply in other situations) is that you can lay down Consecration when the mobs spawn, then pull them into it. But if you do that with 0/2 in Hallowed Ground, you won't have sufficient mana to consecrate by the second wave.

In another place, Theck says:

Hallowed Ground is a weak DPS increase against single targets, but a more substantial increase to AoE tanking. Many people would argue that the real attraction of the talent is the mana reduction, especially now that Judgement casts are slightly less frequent. That said, most tanks I've talked to have been AoE tanking just fine without Hallowed Ground. Use Consecration in moderation (or not at all in the single-target rotation) and you'll be OK without it.

Certainly you can AoE tank without Hallowed Ground, if you use Consecration in moderation, but why would you? You can just take Hallowed Ground, and then spam Consecration as much as you like. Otherwise, when someone ninja-pulls a pack of Hell Hounds, you find yourself wondering whether or not you can afford to consecrate to pick them up.

Or to take another example, in phase 2 of Ragnaros, you might plausibly want to cast Holy Radiance just after the Molten Seeds explode, followed by Consecration, followed by Holy Wrath for the AoE stun. With 0/2 in Hallowed Ground, you just can't do that - the total cost is 115% of base mana. Certainly, you can get by without it, but I don't see that the alternatives are sufficiently strong to deny yourself the option.

I'm somewhat thinking that the answer might be to take 1/2 Hallowed Ground and leave 3/3 Rule of Law.

*I've just checked, and HotR crits for +50% damage, so a 10% extra crit chance will be roughly 5% extra damage, not 10% as I suggested. That being the case, I think it's clear that Hallowed Ground gives a greater AoE dps boost. Moreover HotR tests for crit separately on each target, so the additional damage isn't giving uniform threat generation (besides being random and therefore not reliable).

Completely unrelatedly, I think Glyph of Rebuke ought to at least be mentioned. The mana saving is pretty large (even if probably unnecessary) and it seems worth considering for fights involving interrupts (admittedly only phase 3 Alysrazor in the current tier, but a few bosses in the previous tier, and various trash fights).

Lathdari wrote:I think that the 'default' build ought to include points in hallowed ground

I disagree. Hallowed Ground just isn't a compelling talent.

The benefit is that you don't have to worry about Consecration's mana cost. It's convenient, but entirely unnecessary. Most situations where you'd want to chain-cast Consecration allow you to, because you're getting larger returns from Sanctuary that cover the extra mana. In addition, you can just intelligently prioritize Judgement. Holy Wrath is mostly useless as an AoE ability, so skipping Holy Wrath and bumping Judgement up in priority when you need mana is entirely feasible.

Hallowed Ground is still a terrible investment for DPS. It's about a 50-60 DPS increase per target. I don't have current numbers, but last time I checked (probably 4.0.6) Rule of Law was nearly 200. Your simple calculation doesn't account for cast frequency, which significantly tips the balance in HotR's favor.

In the Ragnaros example, you'd be much better-off skipping Holy Wrath and casting HR + Cons, because the adds aren't stunnable and Holy Wrath is terrible damage because it doesn't scale with anything. A single HotR will do more damage than Holy Wrath.

In the end, there's just no good reason to take Hallowed Ground. We're perfectly capable of handling AoE situations without it, and it isn't a huge improvement even if we did. The biggest advantage is in ease of use, but that's completely unnecessary with smart play. And there are more influential talents that we can take (Reck, RoL) that benefit us a larger portion of the time.

I didn't realize I left out Glyph of Rebuke. I'll add an entry for that soon.

Glyphed Holy Wrath definitely does stun those adds (the molten elementals). I do it every time. See Rokh's comment here, if you won't take my word for it.

I don't like to doubt your theorycrafting, but isn't that 50-60 dps number the number from your single target sim? But the consecration damage per target will be higher for AoE tanking, because (a) it's higher on the priority list and (b) inquisition has more up-time, and correspondingly the buff from Hallowed Ground will be greater.

Edit: Here's a log extract showing Holy Wrath stunning the molten elementals - they are 'afflicted' by Holy Wrath, then 1.5s later it Holy Wrath 'fades' from them:

I don't have current numbers, but last time I checked (probably 4.0.6) Rule of Law was nearly 200.

Is that per point per target? That seems well off. The holy component of my HotR hits for around 6k. A crit adds 3k, so a 5% extra crit chance adds an average of 150 per HotR or 50 dps. My gear isn't the best, but I doubt that anyone is doing four times better! Just to check, Lazeil of Paragon, with an average ilevel of 390, averages 8k with her HotR holy component, which means each point of RoL would add 67 dps.

You are going to be spamming HotR and it generates HoPo which benefits the rest of your rotation much more than any mana savings from consecration.

But yea, I loved glyphed Holy Wrath for Raggy. I use it on both my pallies and make the Holy Pally in gorup 2 run with it. When ehaling Raggy I always run left unless the hammer is left (then I run right). I use Wrath to stun the furthest TWO adds, then Judge/shock one and HoJ is for good measure. The ranged on that side can usually polish off BOTH adds before HoJ wears off.

I also like Wrath for the seed phases and for the big adds. When the add horde approaches during seeds, a well timed wrath can save a lot of raid dmg (I do it on both my toons). The big adds are also subject to wrath, which can be a nice momentary breather for the tanks, especially if the two adds are close enough to hit both of them at once

Lathdari wrote:Glyphed Holy Wrath definitely does stun those adds (the molten elementals). I do it every time. See Rokh's comment here, if you won't take my word for it.

Hm.. maybe you're right. I've never bothered to try on normal. I'm fairly certain it doesn't work on heroic though, which is the last time I tried it.

Lathdari wrote:I don't like to doubt your theorycrafting, but isn't that 50-60 dps number the number from your single target sim? But the consecration damage per target will be higher for AoE tanking, because (a) it's higher on the priority list and (b) inquisition has more up-time, and correspondingly the buff from Hallowed Ground will be greater.

It was from the single-target sim. Consecration damage per target will increase due to Inq, but that's still only 30% (so 65-85 DPS). It should see an additional (but small) bump due to the elevated priority in the AoE queue.

Since my memory's not the best, let's double-check. It may be that the ~200 DPS value I'm remembering is for multiple targets. I've tweaked the AoE simulation so that it calculates values for several different talent setups. Here's the raw results, afterwards we'll check the numbers.

So the 2 points in Hallowed Ground add an average of (4116-3932)/2 = 92 DPS/target.The 3 points in Rule of Law add an average of (3932-3704)/3 = 76 DPS/target.

So it looks like you're right, and Hallowed Ground is a slightly better talent for AoE damage. It falls woefully behind for single-targets, however, and RoL also buffs WoG, which is a survivability benefit. I still don't think that there are enough AoE situations in raid content to make the extra 20-40 DPS worth giving up higher single-target DPS and the WoG crit.

Thanks for doing the sim. Those numbers look much more like what I would expect from a back of the envelope calculation.

I think, btw, it's pretty clear that if you're dual speccing single-target/AoE, you should take 0/2 Hallowed Ground in primary and 2/2 Hallowed Ground in secondary.

However, what I'm interested in is, if you're only running one tank spec, and you don't intend to respec on a fight by fight basis, so you're looking for a do-it-all spec, what should you take? That seems to me to be what a 'default' spec should be aiming at.

My claim is that such a spec should include at least one point in Hallowed Ground.

The argument against taking a point in Hallowed Ground is that it is very weak for single-target fights, and most fights are single-target. That point in Hallowed Ground is wasted for Shannox, Beth'tilac, Alysrazor and Baleroc. Rule of Law is nearly as strong for AoE, much stronger for single target, and also gives a survivability benefit.

I see two counter-arguments. Firstly, Hallowed Ground is strong for AoE - in fact it is the strongest or second strongest AoE talent we have available (after Grand Crusader, for fewer than 7 targets*, and taking HotR as read). Although it's only marginally ahead of Rule of Law on a pure dps basis, it's actually significantly superior from a tanking perspective, because the extra damage is both reliable and consistent across all mobs within the radius. Also, those dps numbers are for a fight of infinite duration, where Consecration's up-time is 33%, but in a real fight, Consecration may have a significantly higher up-time (e.g. in a 40s AoE phase, Consecration has a 50% up-time). A do-it-all spec shouldn't ignore our best AoE talent.

Secondly, not taking at least one point in Hallowed Ground makes certain combinations of abilities impossible to use, as with my Holy Radiance-Consecration-Holy Wrath example. (For the avoidance of doubt, those are the fillers between the usual 3s pulse; I'm not suggesting that anyone would stop generating HoPo here.) You can certainly tank Ragnaros without doing that, but it is (I claim) a thing that a reasonable tank might want to do, and a do-it-all spec should allow for that.

A lot of the above discussion has focussed on a comparison between RoL and HG. But we have another point we could move: the one in Reckoning. Reckoning is clearly poor for AoE. It's our third best single-target talent, and it has a marginal surivability effect from the additional SoI and Windwalk procs, but last time we discussed that, you argued that that effect was negligible. Given that there's no issue with single-target threat, this point strikes me as an attractive one to move.

*Edit - I've realised that I've got this calculation wrong. I suspect that there is a number of targets below which Grand Crusader is superior to Hallowed Ground, but I'm not sure what that number is. I'm not all that bothered, because nobody is suggesting taking points out of Grand Crusader, but I'd be interested to know. Of course, this assumes that Avenger's Shield is unglyphed.

Lathdari wrote:My claim is that such a spec should include at least one point in Hallowed Ground.

I think it depends on the content and what your tanking role will be on each fight. My own opinion is that Hallowed Ground is a worthless talent this tier because there is only one fight where you even AOE. The only fight I can see it being of any benefit on is Lord Rhyolith, but why would you sacrifice single target DPS on 6 other fights in order to do more DPS on a fight where your add DPS isn't even relevant?

Lathdari wrote:A do-it-all spec shouldn't ignore our best AoE talent.

If the tier is devoid of AOE it should.

Lathdari wrote:Given that there's no issue with single-target threat, this point strikes me as an attractive one to move.

The way I look at it is "How many of the fights in the tier would I Glyph Hammer of the Righteous for?" Right now the answer is only one: Lord Rhyolith. I think a do-it-all spec should be biased towards what you're currently tanking. If that is Firelands, then I don't think Hallowed Ground is a useful talent, since you're doing less DPS on 6 other fights to do more on 1.

Maybe that will change next tier, but given the current raiding content, I can't agree that HG should be taken over Reckoning.

I could come up with Grand Crusader numbers, if you like; it wouldn't be that difficult to crank out. Keep in mind that Grand Crusader is actually a smaller single-target DPS increase than Reckoning, though it's a pretty substantial AoE DPS increase in few-target situations.

I'll concede that Hallowed Ground is a stronger AoE talent than I was giving it credit for. Maybe I should re-word the guide to make it less negative-sounding. I still wouldn't include it in a "default" raiding build for Firelands though. Even if it had close to 100% uptime in AoE situations (which it probably does), those situations still don't occur often enough to make it matter. Breaking it down by boss:

Shannox - uselessBeth'tilac - useless, presumably you don't put a prot paladin on spiderlingsRyolith - potentially useful as the Fragment tank, though Fragments usually die to AoE before Consecration would tick its whole duration anyway on normal difficulty. May be slightly more useful on heroic.Alysrazor - uselessBaleroc - uselessMajordomo - useless. Spirits are generally killed by melee/cleave, and since you have a large amount of face time with the boss, the extra DPS from Reckoning should easily outpace HG there.Ragnaros - I'm skeptical that Hallowed Ground makes a significant difference. On normal, the adds die so quickly that they would only take a few ticks of damage anyhow. Increasing your personal AoE DPS on them isn't critical, because they'll be taking massive overkill from the rest of your raid's AoE damage. You have maybe 3 GCDs worth of time to damage them, if your raid's DPS is average or better. On my warlock, I can barely get off Shadowflame and one Seeds of Corruption before they die. So you might contribute an extra 300-500 damage per mob by speccing Hallowed Ground if you use HotR-Cons-HotR, but I'd argue that extra damage is 100% meaningless because it's just translated into wasted overkill damage by your raid's actual DPS players. On heroic, it's useless because you basically can't get close to the adds to use it, and they don't stay in one place anyhow.

Based on that, there are possibly 2 places that Consecration is even potentially useful in the current raid tier, and I'd argue that neither is particularly mission-critical. On Ryolith, I'd rather have an extra 300-500 DPS from 1/2 Reckoning during the burn phase, and on Ragnaros the usefulness is mitigated by the fact that your entire raid is cleaving/AoEing down adds in under 5 seconds.

Also note that for future patches, Holy Radiance will be a non-issue for us, since it's being redesigned in a way that makes it much harder for us to use it.

The situations where I can see Hallowed Ground shine are trash mobs, where you're frequently pulling 3-5 mobs and likely to be dropping Consecration. That's why it's featured in the "Heroic 5-man" build:

Theck wrote:This build is tuned for an undergeared tank working through heroic 5-mans, especially Random Dungeons where you might get DPS that aren't patient. It trades a little bit of survivability in the form of GbtL and Divine Guardian for more threat via Reckoning and Hallowed Ground.

If you're mostly running heroic dungeons, this build should serve you very well. Hallowed Ground will give you peace of mind while using Consecration liberally, and the plethora of threat talents will compensate for the lack of Vengeance support. In 5-mans, you probably won't even miss Divine Guardian or the overheal bubble of the second point in Guarded by the Light.

If Dragon Soul contains a lot of AoE-heavy fights, then I could certainly see making a similar change to the default raiding build. Probably only one point from Reckoning to HG, because I think the survivability benefit of Rule of Law trumps the DPS increase. But not in a 4.2/Firelands build.

Lathdari wrote:A lot of the above discussion has focussed on a comparison between RoL and HG. But we have another point we could move: the one in Reckoning. Reckoning is clearly poor for AoE. It's our third best single-target talent, and it has a marginal surivability effect from the additional SoI and Windwalk procs, but last time we discussed that, you argued that that effect was negligible. Given that there's no issue with single-target threat, this point strikes me as an attractive one to move.

Clearly, eh ?

Using the T12H set (i.e. an ilvl 391 weapon), the second point in Reckoning (i.e. the weaker one) is better than one point in HalGro for up to and including five swinging mobs. If you deem "burst" AoE and even spreading of the damage important/mandatory, HalGro is the natural choice. If we're speaking about the total damage output, HalGro is precisely as good as 4.x Consecration is. In other words, nigh unusable.

I think we've reached the point where the difference between us is wafer thin, but I will note that for the molten elementals on Ragnaros, you can and should put the Consecration down before the adds have arrived, which will add a couple of extra ticks. I still agree that it's not making a significant difference though - the raid's actual dps should be able to AoE those mobs down with no difficulty.

Lathdari wrote:I think we've reached the point where the difference between us is wafer thin, but I will note that for the molten elementals on Ragnaros, you can and should put the Consecration down before the adds have arrived, which will add a couple of extra ticks. I still agree that it's not making a significant difference though - the raid's actual dps should be able to AoE those mobs down with no difficulty.

And on heroic, where the DPS check is non-trivial, you can't use the same trick. You might be able to squeeze one tick out, at most, and even that's risky.

At a glance I'd say no, but I'm not exactly sure how valuable the crusader glyph is when survivability is in the picture. Part of my brain thinks I've actually seen calculations on this, but I'm posting from my mobile now so I can't be bothered to hunt it down..

"Ask stupid questions. Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer,not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant."

Those numbers are wrong. The Judgement glyph is additive with WotL, which means the increase from the is only 5% of logged values. You're gaining an additional 275 absorb on each bubble (358 with Inq). And that's not accounting for overheal inefficiencies.

Frankly, Glyph of Judgement is nigh useless as a survivability glyph. It's 30-40 eHPS that's not controllable. And it comes at a decent DPS cost if you're trading the SotR glyph for it.

Can I just check, the glyph of Holy Wrath does not bring a significant benefit in Dragon Soul, does it? The only case I think it might help is with a little bit of the Hagara trash, but that's utterly trivial.

I found the glyph invaluable at the start of Cata for stunning the many elementals/dragonkin in 5 mans and it was very nice for Ragnaros adds, but at the moment, I want to find room for a PvP glyph and am wondering about Holy Wrath being the one to go. (Yes, I am too mean to switch glyphs.) My other majors are focussed shield (again, not much trash in DS) and divine protection (really like it for Zon'ozz and for Ultraxion).

Holy Wrath is probably a decent one to drop. I re-glyph from boss to boss, but I don't think I run HW for any of them in DS. The only thing I can think of that might even be stunnable are the amalgamations/bloods on spine and the fragments on phase 2 madness. And I'm not certain about any of those.

Divine Protection is one that gets swapped in and out on a fight-to-fight basis. It's invaluable for certain hard modes and useless for others.